Super Zoo-Chapter 654 - 645: The Little Red-crowned Crane that Came to Drink Water

All along the way, I haven't come across a single animal!

Although I haven't deliberately expanded my spiritual power to its maximum scale, for safety's sake, Suming has always maintained a coverage of spiritual power within a radius of several tens of meters to prevent anyone from launching a sneak attack on him.

If we were to encounter a poisonous snake or a wolf launching a surprise attack, Suming might not necessarily be afraid. Summoning his spiritual power and the Phantom Energy Storage Sphere is just a matter of thought.

But with Su Meng here, any attacker looking to sneak up would probably be in big trouble, most likely getting killed on the spot. It might be an exaggeration to say Su Meng could punch a cow to death, but crippling a wolf with a single punch would be easy for him.

Yet, having ventured several kilometers deep into the mountains, Suming hasn't spotted a single animal!

It's not that there are no animals at all, rather there are none of the slightly larger types. Along the way, apart from small creatures like ants, earthworms, and sparrows, not even a rabbit or a hedgehog has been spotted.

This isn't right!

Although in recent years Yangchuan City has developed rapidly, with a surging population, many animals from the Qinling foothills near the urban areas have gradually started relocating deeper into the mountains. However, in the direction these animals are fleeing into the mountains, the nearby area within a dozen kilometers is rural, and apart from a few villages, there's only an airport four kilometers away, where human presence is sparse and the animal population should be relatively larger.

Moreover, now being several kilometers away in a straight line from the foothills, even if the edges are urban, a few kilometers in should be deep enough. Even the part of the mountain adjoining the urban area occasionally sees traces of medium-sized animals like wild boars and wolves roaming, let alone this deserted bird place?

Animals all have their territories, and a territory means a relatively stable hunting area. How could they leave a vast stretch of mountains unclaimed?

After walking some distance more and following the markers left by the first search party that went into the mountains, Suming found a destroyed animal den.

It was the home of the enemy they first encountered on their first encounter with the animal platoon: the lair of the lynx Sun family.

Apart from numerous traces left by humans, there were also many rotten remains of animal limbs and bones around. It seemed that something unknown had definitely happened here.

Su Meng wandered around the den for a while, sniffing with his nose and touching with his hands, then made a few simple gestures towards Suming.

"Hmm?" Suming looked slightly startled. This guy still isn't very good at speaking. How does he manage his love life?

Could it be when he's with Nurse Hu, they don't need verbal communication and just get physical directly?

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I'm really behind the times, a wild man like him is more liberated than me.

Su Meng, having no idea what Suming was thinking about, let out a chuckle, pointing deeper into the jungle.

He meant that the owner of this den hadn't come back for a long time, and the den had already been abandoned.

Suming thought, could it be that the fleeing animals killed the owner of the den? It was entirely possible, considering the size of the den. Although the owner was not small and may have been a predatory animal, fleeing animals were numerous, including a sizable number of predators, with two pandas even playing the role of military strategists; it was unlikely that any solitary mountain animal could contend with them.

Suming was right in his guess for the most part, the only thing he didn't anticipate was that the two pandas weren't playing the role of military strategists, but that of leaders.

"Let's go, keep moving forward!" Suming gestured onwards, leading Su Meng in the direction the animals had gone, continuing their march.

...

As dusk approached, the silhouettes of Suming and Su Meng appeared on the edge of a not-so-small lake.

Murmuring streams flowed into the lake from a distance along the rocks, and the expansive surface of the water was eerily quiet, reflecting a ghostly shimmer under the moonlight.

Something was still off, this place was too silent!

Suming sent a wisp of his spiritual power into the water, spreading it like a large fishing net. The spiritual power followed the ripples, quickly covering the entire surface of the lake, scanning it up and down like a radar.

Damn it!

The area of this lake was almost more than half that of Shuijun Lake, with an average depth of at least two and a half meters, shaped like the bottom of a pot, with the deepest areas reaching five to six meters.

In such a remote lake deep in the mountains, seldom touched by humans, it is completely unreasonable to have no large aquatic life.

Even the fish were scarce, mostly small fry a bit larger than minnows, with hardly any weighing over a pound.

In the deep wilderness, where humanity might not venture for decades, animals thrive peacefully and naturally. In such a large body of water, fish weighing five or six pounds would be merely average.

Given environmental limitations, fish hundreds of pounds would be unlikely, but growing to several dozen pounds should not be an issue.

But now, it's as if the aquatic resources of the lake have been pillaged.

Around the lake, there were indeed many remnants of large fish, gnawed beyond recognition.

Such a large water source should attract animals from dozens of miles around to drink, Suming decided to stealthily wait by the lakeside, no longer willing to believe he couldn't grab a nearby native alive and ask what exactly happened!

Wait!

Since they were setting up an ambush, they obviously couldn't make a fire, lest they be discovered. Suming and Su Meng, each dressed in rubber suits, found two large holes by the riverbank, and lay in them, revealing only half of their heads as they sneakily watched the situation by the lakeside.

Damn it, where did all these big holes by the lake come from? Suming, just like the first search party, was completely clueless, wondering if there had been a huge explosion here.

As time ticked by, Suming was almost falling asleep, without seeing a single animal come to drink.

On the side, Su Meng was bored out of his mind, taking out a cellphone and poking at the keyboard with a fat finger, not clear whether he was sending WeChat or text messages.

"Is there a signal here?" Suming was startled, his phone hadn't had a signal since the afternoon, and the search team had encountered the same problem, or they would have been able to call for aerial support and transport food and medical supplies to deepen the search effort.

Growing curious, he peered over and saw on Su Meng's phone screen, three identical smiling faces joined together, and with a 'biu', they disappeared.

"You've changed!" Suming looked at Su Meng, who was engrossed in his game, with a pained and distressed expression. It hadn't been that long, and a perfectly good, naive mountaineer brother, living on raw meat and blood, pure and unpolluted, had descended the mountain for less than six months and was now addicted to mobile games.

Games kill people! Suming thought, wondering if maybe he should have Shen Yan set up a new team specifically aimed at mobile games?

And indeed, this stuff was actually quite profitable. If a game could meet market demands and hit the sweet spot for players, with the current speed of online dissemination, it could spread across half the world in a few days, then flip it to a buyer and easily rake in hundreds of millions.

Developing mobile game apps is the quickest path to rise for purely technical guys, other than time-traveling.

But domestically, there's a bit of difficulty, as piracy is still rampant.

It's no wonder Suming was already half a businessman, as soon as his mind touched anything related to making money, it would whirl fast, and in an instant, he would think of a long list of related matters. It would be best to register a company overseas in the future, with many businesses done directly abroad, and perhaps after group integration, consider listing overseas... However, this would require a reliable talent to take care of this mess abroad, and currently, he didn't seem to have such talent at his disposal. It was unlikely that Zhao Yun, the uncle, would be able to offer help back and forth overseas unless his wife gave the order...

Talent, talent! What's most precious in the twenty-first century? Talent! The bigger a business grows, the more deep Suming feels the meaning of this statement, a real shortage of talent!

While Suming's thoughts were already crossing the ocean and landing on NASDAQ, Su Meng suddenly put down his cellphone and sternly stared at the far side of the lake.

"Finally!"

Su Meng's sense of smell and hearing were much stronger than that of ordinary people. Seeing his reaction, Suming knew they had finally waited for it.

Looking in the direction Su Meng was staring at, under the moonlight, some movements could be seen in the grass half a person tall by the lake, a 'big bird' came out rustling.

The big bird was smaller than a swan but larger than a wild duck, with gray and white feathers all over, two thin legs, a slightly curved but sharp long beak, and a striking red crest on its head.

"A red-crowned crane?" Suming squinted for a better look, it probably wasn't a red-crowned crane, as those are much taller with longer legs—a 'crane' at a glance, whereas this creature in the distance looked more like a large duck.

Or it was an immature red-crowned crane that had not yet fully grown.

Suming raised an eyebrow, "Little buddy, where are your mom and dad? Uncle will take you to play..."

The little red-crowned crane, after emerging from the water grass, didn't immediately go to the riverside to fish and drink, but suspiciously looked around for over half a minute to make sure there was no danger before boldly, step by step, approaching the water surface...

This creature was likely there to hunt, lowering its head and staring at the water, yet it didn't find a single fish after a long time.

After being raided by those bad guys, the number of fish in the lake plummeted sharply, making the whole lake seem like a scene of a massacre. The surviving fish had all become skittish, highly alert, hiding under the water.

The little fellow stood alone in the shallow water for seven or eight minutes, his stomach rumbling with hunger, not spotting even a tiny fish.

So hungry...

Just as it was getting frustrated, an innate biological warning went off, an overwhelming sense of danger washing over it, its feathers flaring up in fright!

Instinctively looking up, it realized two 'bipedal beasts' had silently surrounded it at some point, with one in front displaying a sly smile.

Don't eat me, I'm just passing by... The little one was scared out of its mind...

Suming enveloped it with spiritual power, chuckling, "Oh, so you're a little crested ibis, my little friend, don't be scared, uncle's gonna give you some candy..."